Loose Pass
This week we will be mostly concerning ourselves with sponsors and saviours…
Welcome to Loose Pass – our weekly assortment of disjointed thoughts. This week we will be mostly concerning ourselves with sponsors and saviours…
You can keep your fan parks, vuvuzelas and fancy hairdos. The real sporting event of the year kicked off in Auckland at the weekend.
It's been a while since we've been treated to a full-blooded game of Test rugby, and the opening round of the Tri-Nations shaped like a free bar in the desert.
It didn't disappoint. It had it all: pace, tempo, innovation, fluidity, cunning and massive hits.
Here were the world's two best sides embarking on the voyage that many believe will lead them right back to the same patch of grass for a date on October 23, 2011.
Okay, it lacked a little drama, but we had vengeance (this was the All Blacks' first win over the Boks since 2008), longing (oh for Fourie), violence (use your head for thinking, Bakkies), gore (who supplied all that blood?), nudity (put it away, Kieran) and scandal. Yes, Loose Pass can exclusively reveal that Ricky Januarie is pregnant.
Well, possibly not. Some have accused the Boks of lacking hunger. Perhaps. But it's not an accusation that can be laid before our Ricky. He'd eat it.
And yet for all the game's many wonders, Saturday's result has left us curiously unsated. It's as if the organisers have got it all backwards. It feels as if we've watched the final and will now have to sit through the round-robin games.
That sounds like a terrible slight on the Wallabies, but we can't see the All Blacks' new-and-improved pack being fazed by two trips across the Tasman Sea.
Furthermore, the All Blacks now go into home and away ties against the Boks with what amounts to a head-start of five tournament points.
Yes, you've guessed it: it's another moan about the lop-sided schedule.
Some of you have argued that it all evens out given that each team plays three away games and three at home. But it's just not the same.
We'd even stick our necks out and say that the loopy schedule has already handed the spoils to New Zealand. The world's bookmakers appear to agree: the All Blacks went from 11/2 to massive 1/2 odds-on favourites for the title in the space of just 80 minutes.
All there is to do now is to watch as the crowds thin out.
The arrival of the Pumas can not come quick enough.
————————————————————————————————————————
Some months ago, Loose Pass put the wind up our suited superiors by declaring that we would not be referring to Dublin's new temple of rugby as the Aviva Stadium. It's New Lansdowne Road, damnit.
It was an insignificant stand in the grand scale of things, but it made us feel like Che Guevara sticking it to the man at the United Nations
Alas, like Che, we've now been caught in a deadly pincer movement.
Aviva have assumed sponsorship of the English Premiership making it nigh on impossible for us to ignore their deliberately banal alias. The man has stuck it to us.
Okay, perhaps European rugby does need to kick its dirty habits. We've had the Guinness Premiership and Courage League, and we've still supping at the Heineken Cup and Magners League. Insurance is so much more wholesome.
But we'll miss the black stuff. Not just the liquid freebies but also those menacing adverts and all that cool kit. Aviva's livery of yellow and light blue make the new Premiership's match balls look like something you'd pick up at the petrol station on the way to the beach.
Still, if Aviva are willing to inject new money into the game's grassroots then we welcome them with open arms. Viva Aviva, even. (Just please remember to pass a little of thw wonga our way.)
Guinness, for their part, declare that they are “hoping to continue our association with rugby”.
We're not sure they need to worry about that. Getting in a round of post-match pension products will never catch on.
————————————————————————————————————————
Hats off to the Leicester Mercury. As we reported earlier in the week, the newspaper took up the case of Manu Tuilagi, the Leicester Tigers tyro who was denied permission to remain in Britain after he overstayed a holiday visa and faced being sent back to his native Samoa.
The newspaper campaign galvanised the support of the city's rugby fans, the club and local politicians.
The upshot? The Home Office has now granted the 19-year-old indefinite leave to remain in the country that he has represented at age-group level.
Some are putting the coup down to the power of local newspapers, but it's equally plausible that Whitehall mandarins made a few inquiries before deciding not to mess.
Measure out Britian's deficit in pound coins and you'll find that it weighs almost as much as Manu's five older brothers: Henry, Alex, Freddie, Andy and Sanele.
————————————————————————————————————————
QUOTE OF THE WEEK I
“A common misperception of me is that I'm a loud-mouthed gob-sh*te.”
– Former England star Austin Healey sets the record straight in an interview with The Independent … before going on to say that he's got too much common sense to be a politician. And that Facebook is the reserve of “lonely, insecure people”. He might have a point: his own Facebook page lists just eight friends.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK II
“There's a bloke called Hugh Grant – he got into a bit of trouble like this and I think if the cheque bounces sometimes, they only realise that they've been raped, you know, sometimes.”
– Former New Zealand star Andy Haden demonstrates that diplomacy is no prerequisite for ambassadors of Rugby World Cup 2011.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK III
“I've decided if he doesn't win the rugby World Cup maybe we'll consider Tasering him. We're an incentive-based political party.”
– New Zealand Prime Minister John Key maps out his plans for Richie McCaw. And you thought choking only followed a good Tasering…
Compiled by Andy Jackson